


Not With a Bang, but With a Whimper

by Pastel_Teacups



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst, M/M, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 07:47:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5908096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pastel_Teacups/pseuds/Pastel_Teacups
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Maybe it’s selfish, to want to save Luke. </i>
</p><p><i>Han decides in a fraction of a millisecond that he doesn’t care. </i> </p><p>--</p><p>Or, Luke kills himself. Han finds him in his last moments. Han doesn't say what he needs to say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not With a Bang, but With a Whimper

Han doesn’t want to believe his eyes. 

But he can’t deny what’s in front of him, and there’s no time to waste on wishing this wasn’t real. Because it _is_ real, and Luke is bleeding. 

Luke is bleeding onto the Falcon’s floor and onto his too-big clothes and onto more of his rapidly paling skin; it seems like he will bleed for days if Han doesn’t do something about it. 

Luke doesn’t want to be saved. He holds Han back with the Force when he lunges forward, but his range is weak and soon enough his strength flickers away leaving Han to rush forward and take Luke’s frail body into his arms. 

“Damn it, Luke,” he murmurs because there’s nothing else to say, no words as he tugs a towel from the sink and presses it against Luke’s lacerated wrists, hard. Luke whimpers between parted lips, cheek smudged with blood. “Don’t die on me.”

Luke’s too thin. He’d been too thin for weeks, and Han had been too thoughtless to see it. He cradles Luke’s too-thin too-pale body in his arms and tries to stop the bleeding, praying to Gods he doesn’t believe in to let Luke live. 

They can do anything to him. But not Luke. Not like this. 

Luke doesn’t say a word. Maybe he can’t, Han isn’t sure. But by the way his blond hair fans out around his head like a halo, Han is fairly certain that he’s ready to go. 

Maybe it’s selfish, to want to save Luke. 

Han decides in a fraction of a millisecond that he doesn’t care. 

But fate, that stupid bastard Han wishes he didn’t believe in, has other ideas. The bleeding doesn’t stop. 

Luke turns white as the snow he was once trapped beneath on Hoth. 

His eyes slip shut. When Han pries them back open, they are glassy and unmoving. Even the brilliant blue seems to have dulled. 

When Han brings shaking fingers to Luke’s neck, he finds no movement. No pulse. 

He doesn’t scream, like he wants to. He can’t find the air. 

Instead he shakes almost violently and tries again, tries to press harder into Luke’s self-inflicted wounds, taps his cheeks lightly in the miserably vain hope that Luke might wake up. 

He doesn’t. 

Han presses a kiss to Luke’s cold, cold forehead, before the tears slip from his eyes, but he pulls away before they can touch Luke’s face. 

He doesn’t deserve that sort of sadness. 

Distantly, Han remembers their time together. It plays through his head, like _he's_ the one dying and this is _his_ life slipping through his consciousness. 

He'd never said the most important words, the words that had so silently lingered between them in moments of quiet contentment. 

_I love you, Luke._

It isn't meant to come out as a whisper, but it does. 

No magic happens. There's no burst of light, and Luke's big blue eyes don't flicker open with the sudden realization that he is loved. The blood doesn't seep back into his cuts, and they don't return to being smooth, tan skin in seconds.

It isn't a happy ending. 

But Han had never read those kinds of stories anyways.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this! Comments + Kudos are always pathetically appreciated. I also have a [Tumblr](http://little-floral.tumblr.com/), if you want to come and say hi!


End file.
